Bible · NudgeRead the passage
Jeremiah 31:15
Yahweh says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”
In the King James Version
Thus saith the LORD; A voice was heard in Ramah, lamentation, and bitter weeping; Rahel weeping for her children refused to be comforted for her children, because they were not.
What was happening around this
Yahweh is the speaker in Jeremiah’s oracle; the immediate addressee after the image is Rachel, and the people represented by her are promised return from “the land of the enemy” (vv. 16–17). Carolyn J. Sharp identifies the setting as the losses of colonization and exile, and notes that Ramah is named as a deportation way station in Jeremiah 40:1; she also reports that Rachel’s tomb location is contested. The often-isolated lament is immediately followed by the return promise in vv. 16–17.
Source: Sharp, “Commentary on Jeremiah 31:15–17,” Working Preacher
The verses on either side
- They will come and sing in the height of Zion, and will flow to the goodness of Yahweh, to the grain, to the new wine, to the oil, and to the young of the flock and of the herd. Their soul will be as a watered garden. They will not sorrow any more at all.
- Then the virgin will rejoice in the dance; the young men and the old together; for I will turn their mourning into joy, and will comfort them, and make them rejoice from their sorrow.
- I will satiate the soul of the priests with fatness, and my people will be satisfied with my goodness,” says Yahweh.
- Yahweh says: “A voice is heard in Ramah, lamentation and bitter weeping, Rachel weeping for her children. She refuses to be comforted for her children, because they are no more.”
- Yahweh says: “Refrain your voice from weeping, and your eyes from tears; for your work will be rewarded,” says Yahweh. “They will come again from the land of the enemy.
- There is hope for your latter end,” says Yahweh. “Your children will come again to their own territory.
- “I have surely heard Ephraim grieving thus, ‘You have chastised me, and I was chastised, as an untrained calf. Turn me, and I will be turned; for you are Yahweh my God.”
Where this comes up